Friday, June 19, 2015

The Spring '15 Panoche Glider Palooza

May 23-25, 2015

by Dan Colton

It was exactly a year ago that I was reading about the great
times folks had, even with marginal soaring conditions, at the Glider Palooza
in Panoche. I had no idea where the heck
Panoche was, but I made it a point to remember this event and sign up the next
time it rolled around. This idea
reinforced my intentions to improve my soaring skills throughout the subsequent
months.

When the invitation for the Glider Palooza finally came back around
I jumped right on it. My first thought
was to request to take the NCSA single-seat G102. However, I thought about how I could
participate in this event AND support others in the spirit of Hollister League
and the PASCO initiative (let's give Marianne tons of credit here!) to promote soaring
as a lifelong adventure. So I decided to
request the NCSA G103 Twin and offer to share all my flights with any other
adventurous souls in NCSA.

I won’t bore you with the logistics and
planning, let's just say that plans seem to work out if you are willing to
make a commitment, endure small inconveniences, and follow through. And with great help from Marianne especially,
and all of the other participants of the event, It all worked out and I found
myself driving into the barren Panoche Valley.

The
Panoche International Airport with Larry’s Bar in the background

I quickly
found that there are actually three (and only three) attractions in the Panoche
valley: 1) Mercey Hot Springs, 2) Larry’s Bar, and 3) the Panoche International Airport
(affectionately named). So if
you are looking for beaches, blue water and bustling nightlife you probably
took a wrong turn on the Interstate. But
if you want a great soaring adventure with good friends in a meditative and
relaxing environment, and you don’t mind being dirty and sweaty, then you have
found your heaven.

Warm mineral water swimming pool

While I was helping the last few pilots to launch I saw one
of the BASA guys (Gunther Hagleitner) struggling to fit into their club’s
Pegasus.Since I had an empty seat in
the NCSA Grob I offered him a more roomy accommodation and he gladly accepted.We towed toward the Panoche hills and
released at about 2,000’ AGL under a nice cloud that took us to over 6,000’. From there we headed west to EL1, climbing in
the occasional thermals in the blue.

Post-flight pilot's debriefing room

The first order of business Saturday morning was to rig all
the gliders, of which we had about ten due to a fantastic turn out.There was a heavy fog over the hills
preventing the valley air from becoming conductive and the tow plane from
launching from Hollister to get to us, so we could pace ourselves nicely.

I got the first two flights of the day, those being area
orientations flights from Buzz so that I could fly Panoche and then take two NCSA
student pilots (Johnny Boldt and Tobin Fricke) for rides.After my orientation flights we launched the
fleet.The wind was blowing along the
runway at about 10-12 knots and the initial launches were downwind.Daniel decided to push the BASA DG1000 to the
far end so he could launch into the wind.It was a great idea except that he forgot to close the air vents before
take-off and when he rolled into the dust cloud kicked up by the tow plane,
well you know what happened then. :-)

Johnny, Tobin and I took turns running wings and trying to figure
out where to fly based upon the early pilot reports of lift. Then Johnny and I launched and towed toward the hills south of
the airstrip.We passed through three
good thermals in the first thousand feet on tow and I was feeling good about
the prospects for this flight.However, I
was overly optimistic and released too early to get a solid contact with our
first thermal (my bad) and this flight was quickly drawn to a close.

The next flight was with Tobin and I had a better idea now
of where I wanted to release.We let go
at 4,000’ MSL in solid lift under a cloud and quickly climbed to 7,000’.We played below a string of clouds at the
north end of the Idria valley but didn’t venture much farther than that since
this was our first experience flying in this location.

Tobin at cloud base in 81C

The radio was crackling all around us with reports of one
group of adventurous pilots headed for the Sierra foothills under low cloud
bases and valley haze.Amazingly enough
they were successful in making the Sierra foothills, though the low cloud bases
prevented them from flying further East.All but one pilot made it back to Panoche this day with the only
land-out being on an aero-retrievable runway.

After flying concluded on Saturday and all the birds were
tied down we headed off to Larry’s Bar for a real treat.We didn’t have to go far.Larry’s is just at the end of the driveway to
the airfield.What had been advertised
as the Saturday BBQ ended up being a full service meal cooked and served up by
Larry himself.The bar has its own
special atmosphere and is a wonderful collection of memorabilia dating back to
the early 1900’s including bullet holes in the walls.Yes, if only the walls could talk...

Marianne educating the Panoche Airstrip caretaker about glider flying (Larry and his wife Kim are behind the bar)

After dinner we headed back to Mercey Hot Springs to set up
our tents and soak in the mineral water hot tubs.This low-key resort has hot sulfur mineral
water feeding a swimming pool, about a dozen bathtub sized hot tubs and also
the showers.I was introduced to the
daily Glider Palooza routine which goes something like the following: breakfast, complimentary chair massage (if you are one of
the lucky ones), soak in the hot tubs, swim in the pool, shower, fly, enjoy
drinks and a meal at Larry’s with tall tales of the day’s flights, soak in the
hot tubs, sleep and repeat… What more could you want?

Sunday was starting off with improved soaring forecasts and
the sky showed clouds marking thermals as early as 9am.I ran wings until the fleet was
launched.Lift was so good today most
pilots released at just over 1,000’ AGL a couple miles off the end of the
runway where they were able to climb to 6,000’ MSL and depart the valley for
the convergence.Their task today took
several of them past Santa Barbara to within spitting distance of Oxnard and
the Channel Islands.

Buzz makes a big run down south

The rest of the day we played connect-the-dots running from
cloud to cloud along clearly marked energy lines.We ran back to the Panoche hills and followed
a cloud line across the valley toward the Idria valley where we were able to
join another glider and ride the convergence line along the east side of the
valley.It was an incredible feeling to
be sharing the sky with the big boys and flying straight ahead and climbing
under strong cloud streets.

Thank goodness we had PFLARM in 81C that day.It was very helpful pointing out potential
conflicts with other gliders along the convergence line and made me a believer
in the value of this technology for safety.

How could you not be grinning ear-to-ear on a day like this?

After some yoyo-ing up and down the convergence line we
again connected the dots, following a series of clouds, back across the Panoche
valley to the Panoche hills.From there
we decided to fly to Mercey hot springs where we met up with the Daniel in the
BASA DG1000.We decided to declare the
day a success and did a victory lap around the Panoche Valley and landed.

Dan and Gunther tip-toeing into convergence

Our task before dinner was to put 81C back onto its trailer
so it could go to Air Sailing the following weekend for Thermal Camp and XC
Camp.That meant an end to my weekend of
flying but there was a lot of hanger flying left to do at dinner at Larry’s and
in the hot tubs before bed.

The flight totals for the weekend speak to the success of
the event and I encourage anyone in NCSA who hasn’t yet attended the Palooza to
put it on your calendar for next year.

Flight Totals as
Reported in OLC

Date

Pilot

OLC
Points

OLC
Distance (km)

5/25/2015

Ramy Yanetz

686

729

5/25/2015

Buzz Graves

653

719

5/25/2015

Harry Fox

278

260

5/24/2015

Ramy Yanetz

588

643

5/24/2015

Buzz Graves

583

673

5/24/2015

Harry Fox

481

468

5/24/2015

Shannon Madsen

460

484

5/24/2015

Tom Hubbard

404

415

5/24/2015

Daniel Ruegemer

244

252

5/24/2015

Dan Colton / Gunther Hagleitner

140

112

5/23/2015

Ramy Yanetz

584

576

5/23/2015

Buzz Graves

453

482

5/23/2015

Eric Rupp

395

397

5/23/2015

Harry Fox

376

322

5/23/2015

Shannon Madsen

297

310

5/23/2015

Tom Hubbard

274

253

5/23/2015

Dan Colton / Tobin Fricke

65

52

5/23/2015

Dan Colton / Johnny Boldt

24

20

Totals

18
Flights in 3 Days

6,985
OLC Points

7,167
km

And here is a link to
a short video from our flight as we head across the Panoche Valley to Mercey
Hot Springs at the end of our day:

About the Buzzard

The Buzzard is the online journal of the Northern California Soaring Association(NCSA), a soaring club located in the San Francisco Bay area. The club operates generally on weekends, and flies out of Byron Airport.